Devotions

Daily Gratitude Year 7-Day 161: Today, I am grateful for morning devotions. 

What are we devoted to in the morning? The news. Coffee (Oh, how I love coffee!)Is it the spray of a hot shower, Amazon's daily deal or a morning run? The things we love recieve our devotion. 

Every morning you’ll hear me at it again. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on your altar and watch for fire to descend.-Psalm 5:3 (The Message) 

Oh, I was burning to us this passage! The Message is not a word for word translation. It is the Bible in modern language. Some criticise it, but there are times it lights the fire in my heart because it is plain, simple and common language.

Before you judge The Message too harshly, go to blueletterbible.org and look at the original Greek or Hebrew. Often, what The Message lacks in word for word accuracy - it captures in the heart of the passage like few other translations. This is one of those times.  

The ESV version: "O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch." Asking God to light the fire in our hearts that we may serve him with our lives. To ask for him to consume us is giving him our whole hearts. I love this passage. 

I can't resist the link to Romans 12:1! 

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. - Roman 12:1 The Message

I need the constant reminder to carefully choose where I place my devotion. 

Today, I am grateful for morning devotions.